The present invention relates to a method for testing for chemical residue on a surface and apparatus suitable therefor. It is particularly intended to simulate dermal exposure of a young child to chemical residues, particularly pesticides.
In many environments, particularly in home environments, young children who tend to crawl on hands and knees or even to walk barefoot on floors or slide on their stomachs thereon are exposed to chemical residues on such indoor surfaces and in house dust and it is desired to determine the levels of such exposure. There is at present no method or apparatus that will reliably reflect the exposure of young children to such chemical residues on indoor surfaces. In particular, there are no means whereby the instrument sampling the surface have similar pesticide or chemical contact transfer efficiency as the human skin and that the instrument be capable of applying to the surface to be sampled the same pressure or similar one to which a young child will exert when it is either crawling, walking or sliding as on its stomach on such surface.
Further, there are no accurate means to enable one to ensure that contact transfers can be accurately and readily measured. It is, of course, also often necessary to determine the dermal exposure of adults to such residues.